Digital Collections

BIO is a unit within the Research Department at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, led by Professor Fredrik Ronquist and organized in three groups:

• The Biodiversity Informatics Team
  • Group Leader: Karin Karlsson
• The DNA Laboratory
  • Group Leader: Martin Irestedt
• The Research Team
  • Group Leader: Love Dalén

The DINA project (DINA from DIgital NAtural history collections) is an international effort to develop a common collection management system to be used at a national scale, replacing independent databases and helping to make dataset broadly accessible for research and public use.

The DINA project applies an international perspective towards achieving this goal, which has been apparent since its initial efforts to improve the Specify 6 data model in the context of biodiversity informatics community standards and technological advances.

We are using an open source oriented development methodology, cooperating internationally in a decentralized fashion, aiming to:

• pool developer resources
• improve software quality and transparency.
• provide a full-featured relevant feature set

Through open discussions of DINA objectives and activities, the project has benefited from a broad diversity of perspectives and technical contributions beyond its resource limitations.

Technical development of DINA system components is the cohesive theme underlying open-source software development among members of the DINA consortium.

This network of developer groups, focused on data and workflows at natural history collections, recognizes the potential for presenting a de-facto standard for collection management systems beyond the needs of user groups within the respective partner organisations.

While each DINA partner will have to focus on the institutional users they are serving, the system design should reflect this ambition.

Specifically, the architectural approach should accommodate future user demands as best as possible.

It should aim at providing a common collaborative framework that invites contributions from new partners which may become full or associated members of the DINA consortium.

• Web-oriented, public accessibility, using open source technology stacks
• Service oriented architecture favoring RESTful web services (impl with Java, Python)
• Using international standards, like Darwin Core and Audubon

In Sweden the following national institutions are involved

• Museum of Evolution, Uppsala University
• Herbarium GB, University of Gothenburg
• Göteborg Natural History Museum
• Station Linné
• Museum of Zoology, Lund University
• The Swedish Natural History Museum

• Core members, contributing with developer resources
  • Museum of Nature, Ottawa, CA
  • Natural History Museum, Tartu,EE
  • Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, SE
  • Natural Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, DK
    
• Associate members
  • Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, DE
  • Royal Botanic Garden, Edingburgh, UK

New partners are welcome to join the collaboration!

Online currently:

• API for Taxonomy: https://dev.plutof.ut.ee/
• API for Species Information: http://naturforskaren.se/api
• API for Media server:

Work in progress:

• API for coll mgm?
• API for BLAST?
• API for literature?

OAuth v 2 support?

The following slides provide more details on specific modules mentioned earlier

• aka Specify Web Client, alpha released, beta planned for Spring 2014
• complete system for professional mgm of collections (objects, loans, images etc)
• UI resembling Specify 6 Java thick client, esp in parts developed in Kansas
• Components developed at the Swedish Museum of Natural History are designed for DINA Web

On hold! - waiting for stable release that can address user needs

• Contact the DINA Team at Swedish Museum of Natural History - Karin.Karlsson@nrm.se
• Check out the DINA project wiki at http://dina-project.net for …
  • Protocols from meetings
  • etc …

There is a great deal of flexibility in developing DINA modules and API:s of interest to EU-BON partners and other collaborators…

Possible activities may include development of a literature module (possibly based on Bibliography of Life, PenSoft?), functionality to support mass digitization, data mobilization, etc.